1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus that recognizes the characters in image data of an original document and transmits the recognized character data.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an original document (image) data is read by a scanner or an original document data is transmitted by facsimile transmission and a character recognition operation is performed. Further, conventionally the results of the character recognition is converted to code data and such code data is transmitted to a database and stored in a database format.
However, in some situations character recognition was not performed accurately, for reasons such as a reading error in the document, etc. In such cases, there is a possibility that the recognized character data which contains errors is stored as part of a database. Accordingly, it is necessary to check whether or not the recognized character data is accurate at an editing terminal at the end of the database and to edit the same if necessary.
Furthermore, an editing terminal at the end of the database and a character recognition apparatus are connected via a network and are located far apart from each other. Therefore, although the editing terminal can check on the character recognition result information, it cannot check on the original document that was being read. That is, the editing terminal is only able to check on the character recognition result information; but is not able to compare the original document with the character recognition result information. Therefore, it is difficult to judge, at the editing terminal, whether or not the character recognition was accurately performed.
Further, it is conceivable to transmit the read image information to an editing terminal without conversion. However, in this case, a problem arises because the amount of the data being transmitted becomes large; and correspondingly, the network load becomes large.
Furthermore, conventionally, a character recognition apparatus and an editing terminal are connected through dedicated lines, and communications are conducted with a dedicated protocol. Therefore, a further problem is that a system having a character recognition apparatus and an editing terminal cannot be used for general purposes but can only be used by and among the specified users.